by Galia Albin
*
On the first day of the Shiva, her next-door neighbor, ex-Member of Knesset, Rabbi Mordecai Eitan, gave her an accelerated course of instruction in mourning customs. “You do not greet the people who come to pay respects,” he told Talia as he went through the house removing the pictures from the walls and covering all the mirrors. “The mourners should be the ones to start the conversation. It is a mitzvah to speak well of the departed; those who are not in mourning should not cry excessively; the door must be left open all the time.” Talia listened to him with equanimity as he ran around the house taking charge. Very few of the things he said registered in her consciousness.
The days of mourning dragged on slowly, as if innumerable hours had been added to their count. Every day left her with another wound. Journalists came to her house, ostensibly to offer their condolences, but they immediately rushed to their newspapers’ offices to describe in great detail and with undisguised malice, her face, her clothes, her house; conversations overheard at her house were splashed all over the news pages, next to pictures of the funeral. The consolers were interviewed in gossip columns, as if they were guests on talk shows: government ministers, deputies, Members of Knesset, captains of industry, their wives and their mistresses, a well-known bank president. She read those columns with morbid avidity and a certain numbness of spirit, as if it were somebody else she was reading about, a double; but she knew that the imaginary double was none other than herself, that she was given a “time-out” for a short period, a respite from herself.
The living room that she and Jonathan had furnished and adorned with choice antique furniture and original art works now seemed bleak, weird and alienating to her, with its pictures removed from the walls and the crystal mirrors covered with white sheets. People, many of whom were unfamiliar to her, filled the house morning, noon and evening, walking through the open door and seating themselves on the chairs and stools that someone had strewn about the room. Talia’s eyes roamed from one face to another abstractly, losing interest. A cabinet minister whose position she could not remember walked in arrogantly, and her brother hastened to offer him a seat next to her. Two men introduced themselves to her as Jonathan’s friends from Kfar-Yirka, and she remembered that Jonathan had promised to take her there to meet them. “Talinka, I want you to attend a real Arab feast, so you can tell the difference between a genuine Hafla and cocktail parties,” he had told her. Four bearded men in black coats and hats huddled by the door from morning until evening every day of the Shiva. Her brother told her that they were there to pay last respect to Jonathan, who had contributed heavily to their cause. With great to-do, they organized the prayers: Minha, Ma’ariv and Kaddish. Shai explained that this was their way of thanking Jonathan for the donations he had regularly given them. “Charity saves from death,” she heard them mutter repeatedly. She wanted to scream, but was too exhausted. No charity would save him now...
A new Jonathan was revealed to her during those seven days of mourning, Jonathan addicted to Mitzvot, charity, and secret almsgiving. Families of needy, indigent people crowded the kitchen while her sister offered them tea and cake. They came to offer their condolences and, at the same time, to remind her of their expectations that she should not, God forbid, stop sending them the allowances that Jonathan used to send them regularly. “Here, look, this is last month’s check...”
The Prime Minister came on the last day, accompanied by his daughter, muttering words of sympathy in his radiophonic voice. Her mother was eager to entertain him, commenting profusely about the terrible tragedy, about darling Jonathan who left her darling Talinka a widow at such a young age, and who knows better than herself what it means to be left all alone in the world, with small, fatherless children...
Talia refused to think about the manner in which Jonathan had found his death. She skipped the passages in the newspapers that dealt with the circumstances of his death. The journalists’ hypotheses and commentaries did not interest her, for she knew without a doubt that he had not committed suicide. Not her Jonathan. He would never have abandoned her and the children. Something horrible must have happened to him, something she could not imagine. No, she will not think about it now, she told herself, perhaps after the Shiva, when all those people would be gone, when the curtain of fog would lift, when she would regain her strength.
And each night, when the house was finally empty, and Jenny and the children were asleep in their bedrooms, she would lock herself in the bathroom. Surrounded by the enamel tiles, she scrubbed her body until it ached. The scalding hot water washed her and mingled with her tears. Naked and dripping she would walk to her bedroom to wrap herself in sheets that still retained his odor. She spoke to him, raising her voice to a scream. Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan! The horrible voice emanating from the depth of her lungs terrified her. She stuffed her mouth with the edge of a sheet to stifle it.